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When I saw the "American Inventor" program, I immediately loved the show. It's a parade of ingenuity - and sometimes silliness and total ignorance of markets. Watching some of the inventors come onto that stage, I realized I wouldn't want to be a judge on the show for anything. The judges face the constant choice of either giving false hope or destroying dozens of people's hope each night.

For those of you who haven't seen the show, it is essentially a bunch of amateur inventors demonstrating their inventions and ideas in front of a panel of judges (it's on ABC). Each of the four judges say either yes, and the inventor goes to the next round, or no, and he or she doesn't. The "no" votes are a lot more common than the "yes", especially with the many inventors of new kinds of toilets.

Now, apart from avoiding more toilet inventions, what can you do to improve your odds of making it to the next round on American Inventor? Three quick tips:

1. Be Really Ready! You'll have so very little time to demonstrate your idea or invention, so be prepared to say and show everything in a couple minutes.

2. Show It In Action! A builder with a new form of construction blocks (think full-sized homes made of locking plastic blocks) almost lost out because he was talking about the idea and showing blueprints. He almost had to beg for the third "yes" vote to move on. What should he have done? Walk into that room and start building with the blocks, and then say, "This is how we'll soon be building homes." This approach would get their attention.

3. Prepare Facts And Statistics. Many inventions have lost out because the judges thought their was no market for them. Why did they think this? It seems that two of the judges (you need three "yes" votes) have never ridden a bicycle or done yard work. Naturally they don't know that a device for hanging bicycles or an easily-turned lawn mower would sell. Give them the stats: "More than one million people hang their bikes in garages and sheds from dangerous old-fashioned hooks. This is the better alternative..."

Two Inventions To Take On American Inventor

Hey, I don't want to be the guy who spends $20,000 and four years to create a prototype that gets voted down in two minutes flat. I just like dreaming up the ideas. Therefore, here are two ideas which I won't be making into new inventions, and are free for you to develop and patent.

The Talking Pet. Imagine four colored circular pads on a floor mat. Your dog steps on the blue pad and a speaker says "I want to go outside now." He steps on the yellow one and you hear, "I'm hungry now; please feed me." The red one? "Can you please give me some water?" I leave the last pad up to you. This will take some training, but then the average dogs quickly learns to come and get you for a trip outside, so it can learn this.

The Super-Sanitary Toilet. They'll hate you for this one, but have you ever seen how much fine mist goes up in the air when you flush? This explains the fecal coliform bacteria found on everything tested (including your toothbrush) in the average bathroom. Show this and the American Inventor judges will be ready for your solution: A toilet that automatically flushes when you close the lid - and only when you close the lid. This keeps the bacterial-mist from getting up in the air and all over.